If China’s hard currency B-share market did not exist, no one would bother to invent it. The market is small and illiquid: average daily turnover last year was less than $65m. Its purpose, to provide foreign investors with access to Chinese equities, was swiftly usurped by Hong Kong. Today, Hong Kong-listed mainland stocks have a market capitalisation of more than $800bn against $19bn for the B-shares.

Now B-shares are back in the spotlight. Speculation that the shares will be merged with local currency A-shares, which are in the grip of a bullish frenzy, set fire to the lumbering market on Thursday in spite of regulators’ denials. Given Beijing’s efforts to remove other structural anomalies in the capital markets, are investors right to bet on the end of domestic hard currency shares?